The World

TOKYO — Relations between Japan and China remain at a low point nearly a year after Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi suggested a Chinese attack on Taiwan could justify a Japanese military response. Former Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya, who visited Beijing last month, said Foreign Minister Wang Yi told him Takaichi should resolve the matter herself. Iwaya had suggested both governments reaffirm the 1972 Joint Communique, which would amount to a de facto withdrawal of the remark. Wang rejected that approach. In an Oct. 5 policy speech Takaichi called China an important neighbor and pledged dialogue, while promising to firmly assert Japan's positions and revise three key security documents by year-end. Beijing is hosting the APEC leaders' meeting in Shenzhen this month. Crisis Group says China has shown little interest in ending the spat and keeps up maritime activity near Japan. Chinese state media portray Takaichi's tone as perfunctory.

BANGKOK — Myanmar's military counteroffensive in Rakhine State stalled in October amid a run of deadly airstrikes, Crisis Group's monthly tracker says. An Oct. 2 Crisis Group briefing said strikes on a market in Kyauktaw reportedly killed at least 50 people, and the UN called it one of the deadliest attacks in the state since the 2021 coup. The Arakan Army, the main ethnic Rakhine force, promised retaliation. Regime leader Min Aung Hlaing visited Malaysia in October, and the tracker says the United States has stepped up engagement with the junta. The junta held its first election since the coup in phases from Dec. 28 to Jan. 25. The UN, rights groups and some governments called it neither free nor credible, and ASEAN said it did not recognize it. China and Russia, the junta's main arms suppliers, backed the vote.

KINSHASA — Former Congolese President Joseph Kabila launched a new political-military coalition in October that includes the Rwanda-backed M23 rebellion and its political wing, Crisis Group's CrisisWatch tracker reports. The group says the step further undermines an already fragile peace process between Kinshasa and M23. The tracker also notes that Washington raised pressure on Rwanda by sanctioning its defense ministry over support for M23, while regional mediation continues. Elsewhere in the region, Burundi's authorities kept harassing the Banyamulenge community over alleged links to M23. A Crisis Group analysis from Oct. 14 describes Kabila as leading a rebel cause while the conflict in eastern Congo smolders. Crisis Group's Africa page also carries a BBC-sourced assessment that peace talks are going nowhere and that every party is putting control of ground first.

PORT-AU-PRINCE — Haiti's UN-authorized Gang Suppression Force is under growing pressure from gangs while it is still well short of its authorized strength. AP reported on Oct. 19 that gangs fired on an armored vehicle, leaving four Salvadoran soldiers unaccounted for. It was the first major attack since the force began operations. Special Representative Jack Christofides said gangs are testing the force and have carried out reprisal killings. He also reported early signs of reduced gang control in some areas. The force's operations on Oct. 5 and 6 in Tabarre and Cité Soleil cleared barricades and seized weapons, according to its own statement. The Security Council voted on Sept. 29 to extend the mandate to March 31, 2027, with China, Russia and Pakistan abstaining. Al Jazeera put the force at roughly 30 percent of its intended size. Gangs are estimated to control about 70 percent of the capital, and Haiti is preparing its first general election in over a decade.

WASHINGTON — The Defense Intelligence Agency's 2026 Challenges to Security in Space report, released Oct. 26 with a July information cutoff, says Russia is developing a satellite built to carry a nuclear weapon despite the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. The agency says a detonation could rapidly degrade or destroy thousands of government and commercial satellites, and radiation belts could keep damaging spacecraft for years. The DIA has not said such a weapon is deployed. Moscow has said the related Cosmos 2553 satellite tests electronics in radiation conditions. The report also describes Russia's Burevestnik air-launched anti-satellite weapon and notes that Cosmos 2588 came within about 93 kilometers of a U.S. government satellite. Separately, it says China may field space-based directed-energy weapons by the late 2020s. China's state-run Global Times called the assessment hype.

The ARTEX framework is now tied to several separate operations. Microsoft attributed an October supply-chain attack on ConnectWise customers to Storm-0940, a China-state-aligned group. Microsoft says the group used ARTEX to reach more than 2,250 tenants at about 2,900 sign-in attempts per minute. CrowdStrike says that campaign is separate from its VAPOR PANDA findings. In a distinct case reported Oct. 7, CrowdStrike said ARTEX and Anthropic's Claude Code were used against South Korean financial firms from late September to early October. It assessed with moderate confidence that the operator is a Chinese speaker acting for financial gain, not state direction, and did not name a group. CrowdStrike expects China-linked actors to keep adopting agentic frameworks for the next 12 months.

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is lobbying lawmakers to keep provisions in the annual National Defense Authorization Act that would formally rename the Department of Defense the Department of War. Chief spokesman Sean Parnell made the case in a Fox News Digital op-ed published Oct. 26. He argued that the name belongs in statute rather than only in the executive order President Trump signed last fall. Both the House and Senate Armed Services committees included the change in their drafts. The House panel adopted an amendment from Rep. Ronny Jackson, a Texas Republican, by a 29-27 vote during its June markup. House and Senate negotiators must now reconcile the bills, and the final text will show whether the language survives.